Travel Diaries: Adelaide

After two years of going basically nowhere, I recently took an interstate trip to Adelaide for a friend's wedding - so a few thoughts on the transport and urbanism I encountered on the trip. 

To get to Adelaide, I took a VLocity from Ballarat to Ararat, then took the Overland from there. About six other people boarded the train with me in Ararat, and the train seemed to be about half-full overall - although it seemed like one Premium carriage was much fuller than the other, and the same deal in Standard. I was heading over on the Friday before the Labour Day public holiday, and the Fringe Festival was on, so maybe it was unusually busy - but I've gotta say I felt very encouraged by the numbers. 

Lunch is included in Premium tickets, and the chicken curry is very tasty

The trip on the Overland was very pleasant, with good food, good views out the window, and an opportunity to read a book while the world goes by - what more could you want? It takes around the same time as driving, but is infinitely more relaxing. The fact that it only runs twice a week makes it hard to fit into plans, but if it happens to be running when you need it, I'd recommend it. 

The Overland and the Ghan at Adelaide Parklands Terminal

When you arrive in Adelaide, though, the experience is not so pleasant. Rather than arriving at Adelaide Station, you arrive at Adelaide Parklands Terminal in Keswick, which is very clearly set up for people to drive or be driven to. The nearest bus stop is about a 450m walk from the station building, up on Richmond Rd, but for much of that walk there's no footpath - you just have to walk on the service road. To access Adelaide Metro trains, you can walk about 750m to Showground Station - a very modern station served by frequent trains (by Adelaide standards) but this also requires crossing the incredibly pedestrian hostile ANZAC Hwy, which forces you to cross in multiple stages, each of which has a long wait for the green man. Overall, it's no wonder the Overland train manager's announcement over the tannoy as you arrive tells people about taxis and Ubers but not PT. 

Metro cards can be bought on trains, but not buses (via Dcarriso)

Adding to my frustration when planning the trip was the local ticketing situation. You can't buy a ticket on a bus, you have to have a smartcard in advance, and I noticed this too late to have one mailed to me (1). So I initially planned to walk to Showground, where I could at least get a ticket for the train, but as I was hoofing it up Richmond Rd a bus driver pulled over and invited me and a bunch of other Overland passengers to jump on free of charge. He was on his way from the depot into the city to start his shift, which I thought was why it was free, but I later learned that there was free PT Friday-Sunday for the duration of the Fringe. A nice gesture from the driver, regardless! 

After 8pm there's more statues than people in Rundle Mall

After arriving at my hotel near Rundle Mall and dropping off my bags, I went out in search of supplies. I was struck how dead the place became so soon after 6pm, and I couldn't find a supermarket that was still open around 8pm when I was looking. This is really shocking to me - even in my tiny hometown of Ararat the supermarkets stay open till 10pm, so how do they shut down so early in a state capital? I think this speaks to the longstanding urban model of Adelaide, which seems to be that everyone will live out in the suburbs, drive into the CBD for work or leisure, then drive home again afterwards; I'm guessing the supermarkets in the suburbs stay open to a much more reasonable hour, but the assumption seems to be that nobody will be in the CBD much after 6pm, and if they are they're going out for dinner or drinks. 

These kinds of parking structures seem to be a feature of half the high-rises in the CBD

There is certainly the parking to support this model. In addition to a significant number of dedicated multi-storey parking structures, many of the bigger shops and office buildings had several floors of off-street parking as well. This proliferation of parking is just one way cars seem to dominate; the pedestrian light cycles seem to take a very long time to come around, and only last a fairly short time at most intersections - if you aren't waiting at the curb when the light changes, and are still a few seconds away, you really have to bolt to make it over during the green phase. 

Several intersections have these great countdown clocks (via Ryan Smith)

On the plus side, several intersections do have a great feature I'd like to see here - once the green phase starts, rather than holding the green and then transitioning to flashing red, you get an amber clock counting down how many seconds till it goes red. So if you do approach one of these intersections after the cycle has started, you can at least tell if you've got time to dash across the road or if you need to wait for the next cycle. Very handy! 

There's a lot of very steep curb cuts on the streets of Adelaide

One weird bit of pedestrian hostility that I find quite confusing is how steep many of the curb cuts are - I'm used to having roughly as gentle a ramp down at the sides as straight ahead, but in Adelaide they're practically vertical. What confuses me is there doesn't seem to be any reason for it - like it doesn't appear to be substantially cheaper or to favour other modes in any way. It probably takes up marginally less space, but space didn't seem to be very constrained in most locations. Very weird, and pretty average from an accessibility perspective too - I can imagine wheelchair and motorised scooter users would find them difficult to negotiate. 

Adelaide's bus map is a truly bewildering sight to behold (via Adelaide Metro)

Adelaide's bus network seems to have a lot of routes running through the CBD (although still not particularly good frequencies, at least outside peak times when I tended to be travelling). Many CBD bus stops are effectively split over two or three different stops; for example, in the same block of Grenfell St (on the same side of the road!) you have stop G1, G2 and G3, each serving a plethora of different routes. I wonder if this is an indication that buses don't provide as much capacity as is required - maybe it indicates some of the routes on these corridors should be consolidated and converted to light rail? Or maybe it just points to a bus network in dire need of reform and simplification, I dunno. 

Outer Harbour trains dive under the Gawler and SG lines

One thing I noticed about Adelaide's metro rail network is the number of rail grade separations that seem to have been carried out in recent years. In 2017, the Outer Harbour Line was sunk under the Gawler and interstate SG line to avoid conflicts, particularly between passenger and freight trains - though the project also removed a number of road level crossings. Another project from a few years earlier sank the Seaford Line under the Belair and interstate SG lines to remove similar conflicts, and in doing so sank the Seaford Line below Victoria Street. But bizarrely, the project left the Belair and SG lines crossing Victoria Street at-grade, so there is still a level crossing. A very strange half-measure! But still, Victoria's gusto for removing road level crossings hasn't extended to removing these kinds of rail-rail conflicts - there are a bunch around Melbourne, including newly-introduced ones from the Regional Rail Link program, where the Geelong and Ballarat lines meet each other at Deer Park West, and then when the two meet the Bendigo line at Sunshine - so this is definitely an area where we're dragging the chain. 

South Road elevated stop on the Glenelg Light Rail

In a similar vein, another thing I was very impressed by was the new South Road stop on the Glenelg Light Rail. Most of the stops on the route are quite basic, little more than bus stops, but this is a full-blown elevated station, and quite well-designed. Like Lelylaan, the station straddles the road, so you don't need to cross the road to access the platform; interchange facilities are good too, with the southbound bus stop directly beneath the platform structure and the northbound bus stop a few metres away. 

The interchanging bus stops are very accessible

On the downside, you may not need to cross the road here, but you also can't cross the road here. It's an insanely busy arterial road, and they've put a fence up in the median in case anyone is tempted to run the gauntlet; the closest place you can safely and legally cross the road at street level is a pedestrian crossing 250m south. So perhaps the station design was borne out of necessity; nonetheless they've done a good job with it. 

Goodwood Station has a tram line passing overhead, but no connection

A long-standing bugbear of mine is that the line rises for a similar grade separation about 1400m east of there, passing over the railway lines at Goodwood Station. Despite the tram bridge literally being above the station platforms, there's no stop here to allow for interchange between light and heavy rail. This grade sep dates back to 1929, so we can forgive them, but maybe in the future (if the bridge needs a major refurb due to age?) they could turn this into a proper interchange and integrate the different modes a bit better. 

Blackwood Station is one of many beautiful sandstone buildings

Despite most of these observations being about the things that I found lacking, I quite like Adelaide. It's a beautiful city, with a lot of history - and the prominence of sandstone in their architecture certainly presents a nice change from the more bluestone and red brick-heavy architecture of Victoria. It's certainly not the only Australian city that is struggling to shake off its car-dependent ways, and there are some genuinely bright spots of urbanism that I loved seeing. I'm looking forward to heading over again as soon as I can. 

1. Notably in Victoria you can't buy a myki on a bus or tram either - the bus being a COVID change, and the tram being since the switch from Metcard. SA also scores points over us because they still have the option of single-use tickets.